


The Grand Siesta Diary

by JeremyWritesAFiction



Series: The Grand Siesta Diary [1]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Descriptions of Biological Functions, Drug Use, Eyes, Gen, Hellmouth Sunbeams (Blaseball Team), Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeremyWritesAFiction/pseuds/JeremyWritesAFiction
Relationships: Past Relationships and Maybe Still Future Ones
Series: The Grand Siesta Diary [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985489
Kudos: 3





	1. Day 1

Day 1 

I am standing in a room. It is hot in the room. I suspect that it is hot outside the room as well, but there is only one way to find out and I'm not sure I want to. I am slightly distressed that I don't remember how I got here, and even more distressed that there is a floating journal hovering patiently beside my head. Words are forming in neat black ink on the open pages as I think them. I am unsure of what "normal" is, but this is definitely not it. 

The journal is bound in what looks to be soft leather, and as I move to try and get a better look, it moves away. That's... probably fine.

The room is small -- perhaps ten feet by ten -- and the wallpaper is yellow and patterned with a repeating series of orange sunbursts with a cheerful, smiling face in the center. The smile is slightly too wide and contains slightly too many teeth, but I can tell that it's meant to be reassuring. I am not reassured. Outside the door I can hear some sort of celebration. Soft music in the distance, and voices -- indistinct, but definitely jubilant -- penetrate the walls of this room.

There is a south-facing window. I have no idea how I know that it faces south, but it's there all the same. Through the window, I can see... OH GOD WHAT IS THAT? WHAT IS THAT _THING?_

Pull it together. Let's not look south.

To the right, on the east wall, there is a door. I'm sure that it's not locked, but I'm unsure if I want to go through it, considering what's outside the south window...

There is a small desk in one corner, a bed in another, and a closet against the far wall. I can feel a gentle pressure in the back of my head, which is concerning, like there is some invisible force pushing me towards something. I think, for now, that I am going to stand very still in the middle of this room and consider what my next move should be.


	2. Day 2: Standing Still

At first, I thought I would just stand here for a few moments to gather my thoughts. There is no clock, so I can't be sure, but I think it's been longer than that. Standing still seems... right, somehow. The pressure at the back of my head is beginning to dissipate. I am becoming aware of my body's miniscule movements -- the autonomic pathways of my peripheral nervous system cause movement that is outside of my control. I haven't blinked in a long time.

**My heart slows, my breathing slows. I want to be still.**

_It is early morning, still dark out, and Seattle is covered in a thin drizzle of mist. I'm in an apartment, full of music and voices, and rustling, jangling sounds. Keys? Someone is shaking keys at me._

_"Wakey wakey, sleepyhead! We gotta go or we're gonna be late! We can't miss this, [REDACTED]! You still gonna drive first?"_

_I stir from my haze on the couch. I was... where was I? Somewhere else. Having a daydream about standing very still in a room. How weird... Lancaster is leaning over the couch, his eyes meeting mine. My heart catches and I cough, a dry, awkward sound -- not a real cough._

_"Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I was just, uh... resting my eyes."_

_He tousles my hair and tosses me the keys and then marches out the door, hand pumping in the air._

_"Plug! the! bands! Plug! the! bands! PLUG! THE! BANDS!"_

_I stand to follow, and my eye catches a mirror on the wall. I cannot make out my face. Why can't I make out my face? There is something behind me._

**Action potentials ripple across my nerves. My cells divide. I need stillness.**

Something has settled on my shoulder. My eyes, still unblinking, focus -- I can feel my iris constrict around its pupil. Damnable involuntary movement. The journal, which had been floating just out of my reach, has settled on my shoulder. Its pages flutter softly and it sags, spine propped against my neck for support. The pages tickle my cheeks. It is making a sound... not quite a purr, but close enough. I remain standing, although I am a little annoyed at the book's purr-sound forcing my tympanic membrane to vibrate. I am becoming aware of the movement of blood in my circulatory system.

**Erythrocytes release molecules of oxygen, and travel to exchange for more across alveolar membranes. There is so much movement in me.**

_"...yeah, we're killin' all gods, and don't tell me the odds!"_

_Lancaster is drumming on the dashboard as I drive. I look over at him briefly. His hair is beautiful and his smile pierces my heart. Sometimes I wish it would just stop entirely so I didn't have to feel this way. He has no idea what he does to me. He returns my glance and points at me to continue the song._

_"Cause we're killin' all-"_

_And together, we put our fists to the windshield, punching the sun directly ahead of us to the best of our abilities._

_"Gods!"_

_We laugh and exchange high fives. The sun hangs, unperturbed, in the sky as we pass a sign that reads HELLMOUTH: YA LIKE JAZZ?_

_We laugh again and Lancaster scrolls through his phone to find the next song for our road trip. I check the rear-view mirror. The sun's reflection blinds me briefly. There appears to be something in the back seat. Wait, wasn't the sun ahead of us?_

**My cells have paused their respiration. My ribosomes lie dormant, waiting for RNA to transcribe into proteins. I am so close to stillness.**

This time my eyes do not focus, so much as my attention returns to the room. That is slightly better. They are dry, but not in an unpleasant way. Like smooth marble, or glass. I can tell that dust particles are settling on them, but I cannot feel them. I think I've managed to minimize the transfer of signals up my sensory axons. Good. There is still some motion left in me, but it is slowing. If I continue on this course, I think I could achieve perfect stillness... a thought which both excites and terrifies me.

I can hear something behind me -- a thin, drawn-out scratching as the closet door opens. I'm not sure what to make of that.

The journal is... asleep? Asleep seems accurate. Unmoving, at least. It rests against my shoulder, its pages oscillating gently in repose. This could be a chance. What should I do?


	3. Day 3: Equilibrium

I have begun to mark time by the circadian rhythms of the bacteria floating in the aqueous humor between the cornea and lens of my eyes. This presents a problem, as I suspect that my lack of blinking is altering their environment to some degree and, as my body slows, they are beginning to as well. Eventually, time will cease to have any meaning. Strangely, I find myself unperturbed by this. The journal has not moved in hours, at any rate. I don't know whether it's in a deep slumber or... can a book die? I don't know. When I have finally stopped the last of my internal movements, will I be dead? It doesn't feel like dying, but I've never died before. Or, at least I don't think I have.

**My thoracic cavity is a motionless crypt. My heart is settling gently against my lungs, which are beginning to deflate.**

_It is my birthday, and we are watching a home game -- Lancaster and I are in the stands, cheering for Goodwin Morin. Our cries echo from the far walls of the Big Garage, but there is something strange about the sound. It's like I can hear myself screaming, but not the usual cheer -- more like a warning. Across the stadium, the visiting team's fans are beginning a slow, steady drone as their pitcher takes the mound. It is a soft, insistent bark -- three syllables repeated with a gathering urgency, almost like a prayer. The Sunbeams fans are not cheering for their pitcher, I feel, so much as begging and hoping for something very specific and beyond my understanding._

_I am just on the edge of making out the words when, all at once, the Big Garage goes quiet -- silent as the grave. The pitcher stands motionless -- as still as I have ever seen anything. Like a captured moment in time. Like a glacier just before an iceberg sheers off into the frigid sea. I have never seen anyone quite like Lars Taylor._

**I am coming close to that stillness now. The biology is there. Time for the physics.**

It is strange to approach perfection. It's not something that should scare me the way it does. I know that on the other side of this, I will be something... else. Something new. Whoever, whatever I was before will be just a shell that I will leave behind. But the last struggling molecules of epinephrine, desperately trying to break free from the prison of my adrenal glands, are managing to make me feel. I don't know what, or if, I will feel once this is done. But for now I feel fear, and I savor these last moments of panic until that too, is still. And then I turn my mind inwards, ion by ion nudging each excited atom of hydrogen into a placid silence. I am beginning to suspect that I know what is happening to me.

These days of absolute solitude, shutting myself off from the world around and retreating within, have not been without meaning. The context is coming back to me. I am close to real understanding. I dive further within the swiftly-cooling encasement of my physical shell and watch as the last atoms struggle to maintain their gentle spin.

**I am in Seattle again, and I am in this room. Time has become connected.**

_Lancaster is screaming, the fans around me are screaming. I was too, once. Now I am silent and still, and I can properly engage with what happened... what is happening... what will happen. What is always and forever and never happening._

There is a soft gasp in this room in Hellmouth, Utah that echoes from the stadium wall of many seasons ago. I recognize my own brief, flickering moment of glimpsing the truth that I am now so close to grasping. The biology is still. The constituent atoms of this physical form are still. The only thing left is to free myself from the tyranny of gravity's movement. To break free of the iron grasp of the star which hangs in the sky, and witness what lays beyond.

_Lars stands on the mound, and the home team's fans see a slight young form, timid and hesitant -- a deer frozen in the headlights. But they are not frozen. They are still. And sprouting around them, amongst the bustling molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, slipping through the throngs of airborne carbon, are possibilities. A thousand thousand potential pitches, a million hypothetical throws all at once, and then casually, as if they have all the time in the world -- because of course they do -- Lars Taylor plucks the one perfect moment from the screaming mass of competing realities and **chooses.**_

**The shell crumbles. I am home.**


	4. Day 4: Overview

I have been experimenting with my new frame of reference. Time stopped yesterday along with the last of the atoms which made up my body. Either I am dying, and this is the moment between the end of life and the beginning of death, or I have metamorphosed into something that no longer needs a physical form. Given that I am still here, I suspect the latter.

I am connected to every point of my own timeline. I have been watching Lars Taylor select one pitch from the multitude of clamoring possibilities on my birthday -- I keep coming back to this moment, to this set of my eyes. I still cannot make out what the Hellmouth fans are chanting. Three soft, pleading syllables that burn across my auditory nerve, erasing their own meaning even as I grasp their shape. That's it. I need context. I need to perceive from outside this frame of reference, above it, and look down.

**I do not move. Movement is unnecessary. I simply shift my point of view.**

_In the Boston fall, I bend down to pick a dead leaf off of the ground. In its vibrant reds and yellows, the possibility of what is about to happen to Moab, Utah shudders. I do not understand at this time why I feel such a kinship to these colors, and won't for several years. I am here to watch a game -- and to visit my girlfriend, Irene. She is going to school here, and has become a convert to the local team. She says the Flowers have a good vibe. She wants me to move here, to be with her. I want to as well. But I won't. This is the last day we will spend together._

_I pin the leaf carefully to my hat -- a knit cap that Irene made for me. She smiles and takes my hand, and I am full of warmth and sadness._

**I cannot look away.**

_We are in the stands -- Matheo Carpenter is at bat. He isn't very good. Irene is right about the Flowers having a good vibe, though. I don't usually feel this welcome at Seattle games, but here I am surrounded by people who don't know anything about me, and... it feels familiar. In the center of the diamond, there is a slight young figure in a white and yellow uniform trimmed in black. They look straight through Carpenter and, for just a moment, I could swear that the sky shivers. The pitcher winds up, the ball flies true. Carpenter swings, and the only sound is the rushing of wind. Strike one. The Flowers cheer for Carpenter anyway, encouraging him to do his best._

_He squares his shoulders, taps the soles of his cleats, and tests the heft of his bat. Matheo Carpenter makes a good showing of swagger, but I can feel the certainty in him that he will fail here. The pitcher stands perfectly still, waiting for a shift in the air or some unseen signal, and just when the crowd seems ready to look away, the pitch comes like lightning. Carpenter does not even swing. Strike two. The Flowers cheer again, but this time it is a little nervous. A little hesitant._

_Carpenter dusts his hands off, picks up his bat, and points to the outfield -- calling his shot despite the pit growing in his stomach. I see him superimposed a hundred times against his own frame. I see the arc of his destiny. Matheo Carpenter does not know that he is going to die, screaming and burning under the glare of a creature he can not even imagine. But across the diamond, Lars Taylor does._

_Carpenter takes a deep breath, and shuts his eyes as the pitch comes. And much to his surprise, the bat connects and there is a crack of thunder as Matheo Carpenter hits a home run. The Flowers go wild as Carpenter jogs around the diamond, hands in the air triumphantly. In the center of it all, the pitcher turns their face up towards the sun._

**I feel a sharp tug.**

I am above my own body, looking down. There is a pile of calcified dust and a few scattered fragments of bone where I once stood. The journal is lying in the dust, but I no longer have hands with which to grasp it, and no interest in doing so regardless. I know what is inside. Below, the Hellmouth yawns. Above, the sun calls. The universe moves, and I ascend towards it. I have to know.


	5. Day 5: Reflection

As I ascend downwards, falling into the sun's gravity well on my way upwards, I am struck by the experience of time. What I used to perceive as "now" is just a moment, and to either side of it, an endless string of moments stretches out in the gentle curve of the arc of identity. Before I was me, I was someone else. Before I was that person, I was just atoms and molecules, arranged in different forms. Parts of me were bound into the soil, drawn up through the xylem of an apple tree, processed into complex sugars in its leaves, and then slowly moved along its phloem until I was stored in its growing fruit. I was to be the nourishment of future trees, and perhaps some atoms with which mine formed brief cohesive bonds has been, and is being. As I am now, all of these points are the same -- but I have slipped away from the prison of my physicality. Without that identity, without that unbroken chain of cause and effect, who am I now?

**Who was I when the world ended?**

_"No, I just... I think we need some space. You went to Boston, Irene, we're not even in the same time zone!" I hate myself as I say it. I hate that I can hear Irene beginning to cry and trying not to. I hate that my new roommate, Lancaster Wilde, is nervously adjusting the volume on the television in the living room. I am missing the championship between the Philly Pies and the Chicago Firefighters, and I am ashamed that I am thinking of that right now._

_I pace while Irene pleads, promises she'll transfer to Seattle after this semester. I hate that I've done this to her. She deserves better than me. I am about to respond when the line cuts out, dead. I am trying to redial, to break up with Irene. I am weak, and I cannot do this anymore -- I have to tell her that she should let me go. I no longer have a heart, but it is breaking to be here again._

_And then Lancaster is screaming from the living room._

_"[REDACTED]!" He is standing suddenly in the doorway of my room, his face pale as a sheet and his hands shaking. "The Pies won."_

_No. That is not what he said. Why is my name static? Why do my eyes slide from the mirror of my own memory? If I am me, I should be able to look at myself._

**Space, like time, is without limit, but constrained by certain rules.**

At the center of our solar system there is a star, and I am almost there. It is very dense, and its density deforms the physical space around it into a kind of funnel shape. That is why planets rotate, because we all feel a tug towards the center. At the center of this galaxy, there is a much larger body -- a black hole -- but its properties are much the same. Its density deforms the space around it, creating a kind of funnel shape. That is why the galaxy's arms spiral, because we all feel a tug towards the center. I am no longer beholden to those forces -- they only act in physical spaces and I no longer have a physical form on which to act. But I still feel a tug.

**Laws are made to be broken.**

_I am trying to call Irene back. The phone will not connect. There is nothing but a drone of static. Outside, the sky is dark. Was it dark before? I can't remember. Lancaster is screaming from the living room. I can hear his footfalls in the hallway as he sprints towards my room. He is standing there, in my doorway, his face drained of color and his eyes trembling with the weight of what he is seeing._

_I reach for him and he recoils._

_"Who are y- WHAT ARE YOU?" He tears back down the hallway, fleeing from my newness as my body crumbles and I rise from its ashes._

_No. That is not what happened. Why is this so hard? I just want to see, to hear, to know myself. But the looking is painful, and there is still something in me that is afraid of what I'll see._

**There are other things that are without limit.**

Regret is a physical force, like time or space. And like time and space, a moment of regret stretches backwards causally and deforms the space around it. That is why a mind focuses on regret -- because we all feel a tug towards the center. The sun blossoms before me. Before, I would not have been able to understand what I was seeing, but now I have perspective. It is a mass of hydrogen and helium, a superheated pool of plasma burning briefly in the void. It is also a gaping maw into which we are all being pulled -- it wants to shove all of the solar system into it and devour us. We cannot escape by running forwards -- we must move laterally. It is glowing, growing warmth, providing life and light to all living things. Life and death boil within it, compressed by the force of its gravity into one howling note. It is beautiful. I do not have eyes, but I am crying.

**I am ready to face myself.**

_I am trying to call Irene. The line is static._

_"Come on, come on... connect... stupid phone..." I am sniffing, wiping at my eyes with the blue plaid sleeve of my shirt. "Don't let it end like this..."_

_From the living room, I can hear the television. It should be relaying the roar of the Pies fans as the game is called in their favor, but instead there is a low voice, droning through the background radiation of the universe. Outside, the sky is darkening over -- Seattle weather is like that sometimes. I am punching the buttons on my cheap flip phone with an increasing panic in my heart. From the living room, Lancaster is yelling._

_"-ge! SAGE!"_

_Something in my mind snaps back. The darkness outside is not just Seattle weather. It is something else, something ominous. Lancaster is running down the hallway, he is standing in my door with his perfect hair and his bright, glorious eyes full of tears._

_"Jaylen is... Sage, Jaylen Hotdogfingers is dead... they killed her..." He sinks against the doorframe and begins to break down. The phone begins to ring. I can see that it is Irene. I let it ring._

**I should have answered.**

The sun is not looking at me. A star cannot look, cannot speak, has neither eyes nor mouth. But still.

I am in the room in Hellmouth that Lancaster and I rented to watch the finals, the Sunbeams against the Garages. My body is gone, the journal is gone. I don't know where to go from here. I have a name. I have all the regrets and memories that name bears. I can follow the atoms of my body backwards until they are forged in the heart of a dying star, but I am lost. Irene needed me, then. The sun was staring at us, the world was dying, and its newness was shaking out of the corpse of the old, and she was afraid.

There is a knock on the door.


	6. Day 6: The Hanged Man

At first, the knocking is a welcome distraction from my own introspection. I assume it must be housekeeping, or possibly the front desk come to roust Lancaster and I from our room. I feel slightly bad that whoever this is will have to encounter the remains of my physical form and, out of curiosity, I try to shift my perspective outside of the room. And that is when the welcome distraction turns into something else. I cannot see who is outside this room. Cannot, in fact, see past the door. 

The knocking comes again, a lazy doubled staccato couplet. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. I have perceived the impossibility that lies at the center of the solar system. I have charted the chronology of every atom of which I used to be constructed. I cannot see past the door of this room. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. There is an impossible weight behind that delicate, polite rapping. I flee.

**Back to the game.**

_Lancaster and I are in the Sunbeams' stadium -- Hellmouth, Utah is hotter than we expected and we're both sweating buckets. But the Garages are going to win the championship, and we're high on good vibes and bad pot. The fans are going wild on both sides, ripples of excitement winding around the stadium like action potentials racing along axons. Every swing, every strike, every out is a new stimulus that brings a new response -- equal and opposite on each side of the stadium._

_The Sunbeams hit a ground out and their fans scream to ban the ground while the Garages praise it. None of us expects it to actually happen, but it's one of those things you do when you're part of a crowd -- you become a cell inside a macro-organism, performing your role so that the stimulus can be translated into perception and then acted upon. And then Lancaster freezes and gets that look on his face. Like when he told me that Jaylen Hotdogfingers had been killed. Like he can see the end of the world. He grips my arm and..._

_I'm more than a little high, I think. The endorphins of the game have gotten to me. My axons aren't correctly transmitting the signals that he is trying to send, I feel his embrace and my brain seizes on the moment, and I kiss Lancaster. And I see that he looks shocked, and for a moment I think it's because of the kiss. And then I realize that there is a hole in the sky. Tap-tap. Tap-tap._

**Further.**

_The game is starting and the teams are taking the field. The Flowers are full of the nervous energy and optimism I've come to expect from these things. Irene is pointing them all out and telling me their names._

_"Oh! There's my favorite," she says and wraps herself around my arm, pointing wildly down to the field. "Hahn Fox!"_

_This is our first game together since I moved to Boston to be closer to her. It took a while, but I love the energy here -- Seattle doesn't have seasons, it's usually just mildly drizzly and overcast and the only real difference is if you can see your breath or not. But Boston is different. Here, there's snow. In the summer, the heat makes you sweat and in the winter, there is a chill that permeates to your bones. Here, a body can feel the planet's cycle around the sun. Irene leans over and kisses my cheek and I lean my head on top of hers and breath in her scent._

_And I think, no, this isn't right. Irene and I broke up before Hahn Fox ever played for the Flowers. I never moved to Boston. This is wrong. And I look up, and the sky is splitting down the center. Tap-tap._

**Again.**

_It is my birthday and we are in the Big Garage. Lancaster is next to me, his feet propped up on the seat in front of us. We've arrived early to beat the crowd and we're passing a glass bottle of cream soda back and forth._

_"Hey, so I was thinking." He takes a sip and hands the bottle towards me. "If the Garages get into the finals, we should road trip!"_

_"Oh?" I lift the bottle to my lips and try not to sound too eager. "I don't know, man, your car's kind of..."_

_"Terrible? Unreliable? Probably break down and strand us in the middle of nowhere?"_

_"You said it, not me." I laugh and set the bottle on the concrete at my feet. "Besides, I don't think they're going to make it this year."_

_"Yeah, maybe not this year... but like, maybe next year? Or the one after?"_

_"You really think we'll still be friends then?" I look over and raise an eyebrow, smiling and maybe blushing a little._

_Lancaster catches my eye and grins, his big, goofy, loveable, damnable grin. He punches me in the arm._

_"Yeah. For sure."_

_Above us, there is a hole in the sky. It is growing in the center of the sun, and I can see that it is ringed with teeth. Tap-tap. Tap-tap._

**Run.**

_I am running. We are all running. The sky is inverting over the Solarium and we all feel a tug upwards, towards the many-toothed maw dripping down from the sun's fragile disc. The panic is immediate and overwhelming. I try to hold onto Lancaster's hand, but I am torn away, separated. I watch him become trapped against the stairwell, and when his feet leave the ground, when his body becomes detached from the benevolent tyranny of earth's gravity, I scream._

_I can feel the sound reverberate up my trachea, but it is lost in the roar. Is it the crowd? Is it the hole in the sky? And why are the Hellmouth fans still in their seats? Why are they cheering?_

**Tap-tap.**

I am in a room in Hellmouth, Utah. My name is Sage. I used to have a body, but it is crumbling into a fine powder on the floor, along with the remains of a journal. There is a gentle, insistent tapping on the door. I cannot escape. It am terrified of who, or what, is out there, but I cannot escape. I have to answer.

If I can abandon the laws of physics, I can adopt them for my purposes. It is a simple thing to gather the dust of my body and coalesce it into the form of a hand. It is harder to move in only three dimensions, but I do it anyway. I open the door.

Outside, there is a slight figure, standing almost hesitantly with their shoulders and feet together. In their face, I see the face of the sun and all around them, I see the myriad possibilities of this and many other lives. Lars Taylor straightens up, takes a deep breath, and then signs carefully at me.

~We need to talk.~


End file.
